Manure

Councilman Joel Wachs said he will ask the City Council today to expand a Sun Valley grass-clipping collection program. The councilman also said he will introduce a motion to increase city pickup of horse manure throughout the San Fernando Valley. The city began a pilot program six months ago to continue to make manure pickups to about 1,800 households throughout the Valley after the city switched to an automated service.

Compost, the caviar of soil amendments, is not for sale, so if you want to enrich your garden with it, you have to make it yourself. Here's how to do it the way I happen to. In a three-sided, bottomless wooden enclosure, about four by five by four feet, alternate six-inch layers of vegetative material--chopped garden refuse, grass clippings or leaves--with a one-inch layer of packaged steer manure, sprinkling each layer generously with water.

As America's gardeners dig, plant, weed and grow lettuce, beans and tomatoes in their vegetable plots this summer, they are part of a tradition that harks back to the beginnings of the United States. Just by working on a compost pile this weekend, you'll be in good historical company. The first four presidents of the United States — George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — were all utterly obsessed with manure and recipes for compost. Adams even jumped into a stinking pile when he was America's first "minister plenipotentiary" to Britain in London in 1786.

Denise Ritchie scratches holes into a pile of cow manure to make room for the herbs that will create her unusual brand of fertilizer. Once dried and infused with chamomile, stinging nettle and yarrow, the mixture will be bagged and sold as Bu's Blend Biodynamic Compost. Each package features an illustration of a Holstein surfing near Malibu Pier. That's Bu, the formerly scrawny dairy cow Ritchie and her husband rescued as she was about to "go to beef." "You're healing your soil with this stuff," says Sarah Spitz, a KCRW producer and a graduate of the Los Angeles County master gardener program.

In a novel bid to dramatize their opposition to the anti-gay crusade of the Rev. Louis Sheldon, AIDS activists placed bags of manure at his office doorstep on Wednesday, which led to a brief shoving match. No one was injured or arrested in the noonday scuffle between three members of ACT UP/Orange County and Sheldon's son, Steve Sheldon.

Compost happens. But not easily or quickly, which can be a problem for farmers who might run afoul of the Environmental Protection Agency's strict rules regarding animal waste disposal. Environmental Products & Technologies Corp. in Westlake Village hopes to ease this waste management problem with a new closed-loop system that is being tested at two dairy farms. Company spokesman David Foster said the four-part system is designed to address the concerns of the U.S.

When the wind is calm and the air humid, the scent of this fair city can wrinkle the nose. Or at least in certain sections of the community. Sometimes. Just a bit. But city officials say not to worry. That's just the way Ventura smells. Downtown property owner Andy Chakires said an odor--part sewer and part natural gas--has permeated parts of Ventura in recent weeks. Mind you, 73-year-old Chakires says his sense of smell isn't what it used to be.

It could have been pepper spray, but it couldn't have been worse. A 17-year-old stable manager warded off three graffiti taggers at the Arroyo Seco Stables on Monday with nothing more than a stern warning and a handful of horse dung. "I wasn't afraid of picking up the horse droppings, but I was scared to death of [the intruders]," said Heidi Barnes of Highland Park. "Usually I have my pepper spray with me, but I left it at home."

The American scientists were awe-struck when they finally penetrated the sheer cliffs and swept away the scorpions of Navassa Island, one of a handful of remote and anachronistic outposts claimed by the United States. What they found in July were riches far beyond Navassa's million tons of bird dung--a resource once so valued that it accounted for a rebellion by African American workers, complete with ax murders, leading to a landmark Supreme Court decision on U.S. sovereignty there.